Covid-19 Inquiry

Our President, Greg Fell, has written in the BMJ about the Covid-19 Public Inquiry’s findings that communication failures impeded the pandemic response:

Recently, the first report of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry was published. The Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) were core participants in the first module, which focused on pandemic preparedness. We gave evidence on behalf of directors of public health across all the UK’s four countries and dependant territories.

The report concludes that the UK Government and devolved administrations’ systems of emergency planning, preparedness, resilience, and response failed because of flawed and overly complex institutions, systems, and structures, and a failure to learn lessons from the past. It also found that there was too little involvement in the planning process of local bodies and officials, including directors of public health (DsPH).

As one of those DsPH, I was pleased to see that the inquiry team took heed of our collective evidence. The lack of communication between central Government and those of us who are on the ground when dealing with local outbreaks must be tackled if we are to respond to future pandemics more effectively.